Malletort, signing to Captain Bold, and taking Florian’s arm, brought up the rear.
“How now, Mrs. Dodge?” he called out, as he crossed the threshold. “I ordered a fire to be lighted. What have you been about?”
“Alice must be sent for! Alice had been told! Alice had forgotten! How careless of Alice!” And Mrs. Dodge, in the presence of such eligible customers, really felt much of the sorrow she expressed for her niece’s thoughtlessness.
When Alice did arrive to light the fire, her candle went out, her paper refused to catch, her sticks to burn; altogether, she put off so much time about the job, that, despite her good looks, the meeting lost patience, and resolved to go to business at once; Captain Bold, who had recovered his impudence, remarking that, “If what he heard from London was true, some of them would have warm work enough now before all was done!”
The captain seemed a privileged person: all eyes turned on him anxiously, while several eager voices asked at once—
“What more have you heard?”
Bold looked to the Abbé for permission, and on a sign from the latter, handed him a letter, which Malletort retained unopened in his hand.
Sensations of excitement, and even apprehension, now obviously pervaded the assembly. Rumours had as usual mysteriously flown ahead of the real intelligence they were about to learn, and men looked in each other’s faces, for the encouragement they desired, in vain.
“Gentlemen,” said the Abbé, taking his place at the table, and motioning the others to be seated, whilst he remained standing, “if I fail to express myself as clearly as I should wish, I pray you attribute my shortcomings to a foreign idiom, and an ignorance of your expressive language, rather than to any doubt or hesitation existing in my own mind as to our line of conduct in the present crisis. I will not conceal from you—why should I conceal from you—nay, how can I conceal from you, that the moment of action has now arrived. I look around me, and I see on every countenance but one expression, a noble and courageous anxiety to begin.”
Murmurs of applause went through the apartment, while two or three voices exclaimed, “Hear! hear!” “Well said!” “Go on!”